"Each village was ordered by the authorities
to collect and bring in a certain amount of rubber
 as much as the men could collect and bring in
by neglecting all work for their own maintenance. If
they failed to bring the required amount, their women
were taken away and kept as hostages in compounds or
in the harems of government employees. If this method
failed, native troops, many of them cannibals, were
sent into the village to spread terror, if necessary
by killing some of the men; but in order to prevent a
waste of cartridges, they were ordered to bring one
right hand for every cartridge used. If they missed,
or used cartridges on big game, they cut off the
hands of living people to make up the necessary
number." (From Bertrand Russell's text, below.)

Bertrand Russell, the eminent
philosopher who inspired the 1967 War Crimes Tribunal
which exposed the horrors of the U.S. war in Vietnam (see
http://www2.prestel.co.uk/littleton/v1tribun.htm ) wrote the following informative report on the
Belgian effort to 'civilize' the Congo and introduce free
enterprise which, as Russell notes, cost 10,000,000
Congolese lives. The novel "Heart of Darkness"
by the great Polish author Joseph Conrad is a
fictionalized account of these events.

The U.S. and Britain are continuing in
Belgium's footsteps, destroying the Congolese economy and
slaughtering its population. This is done partly through
proxies (the Ugandan and Rwandan governments, which are
Anglo-U.S. creations). The Belgians worked through
proxies as well. Plus ca change, plus c'est la mÍme
chose. [ The more things change, the more they remain the
same.]

I wonder about Russell's use of
'savage' to describe the Congolese whom Belgium
profitably slaughtered at the end of the 19th century and
beginning of the 20th. Was Russell prejudiced? Or was
this bitter irony?

The text follows. - JI

***

Congo

The Slave Trade having been abolished, and
slaves having been emancipated, the easiest way to
exploit black labour was to occupy the countries in which
the black men live, and it conveniently happened that
these countries contained various valuable raw materials.
Greed was only one, though the most important, of the
motives to African imperialism, but there was one case,
that of the Congo Free State, in which it
appears to have been the sole motive. Some of the
Philosophical Radicals thought that pecuniary self-interest,
rightly understood, should be an adequate motive for
useful activity. The example of the Congo will enable us
to test this theory.

The Congo is a vast river, draining an area about as
large as Europe without Russia, flowing through dark
forests, and passing through territory almost entirely
inhabited by savages. Although the mouth had long been
known, the upper reaches were first discovered in 1871 by
the virtuous Dr. Livingstone, who combined in equal
measure a love of exploration and a desire to convert
Africans to the Christian faith. Stanley, who discovered
him at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika, was less interested in
the Gospel than in some other aspects of Christian
civilization. His first journey was undertaken on behalf
of the New York Herald, his subsequent journeys (which
established the whole course of the Congo and of several
tributaries) were made at the expense and in the
interests of Leopold, King of the Belgians, of whom
Stanley spoke always in terms of the highest praise.

King Leopold was the son of Queen Victorias
Uncle Leopold, whose advice she valued in the early years
of her reign. He was moreover, as Sir H. H. Johnston puts
it, grandson of Louis Philippe, husband of an
Austrian Archduchess, a devoted upholder of the Roman
Church, and a very rich man. He was a promoter of
scientific research, particularly in Africa, and a patron
of missionary efforts. The Berlin Conference of 1884,
convened for the partition of Africa, decided that this
high-minded monarch should be entrusted personally with
the government of a territory which extended over about
one million square miles, and contained the greater part
of the Congo basin. He was respected by diplomats,
extolled by travellers, and generally believed to be a
model of philanthropy in his attitude to the negroes. In
1906, when he offered £12,000 for scientific research as
to the prevention of sleeping sickness, he declared in a
manifesto:

If God gives me that satisfaction (victory over
sleeping sickness) I shall be able to present myself
before His judgement-seat with the credit of having
performed one of the finest acts of the century, and
a legion of rescued beings will call down upon me His
grace. [Quoted by E. D. Morel, Red Rubber, p.
151.]

When King Leopold took over the Congo, he announced
that his purpose was purely philanthropic. Stanley, who
conducted propaganda for him in England, explained how
much he loved the black man, and feared that English
people could not appreciate rightly, because there
are no dividends attached to it, this restless, ardent,
vivifying, and expansive sentiment which seeks to extend
civilizing influence among the dark places of sad-browed
Africa. The Prince of Wales (Edward VII), whose
help was invoked by King Leopold as early as 1876 in
calling a conference to discuss the settlement by
Europeans of unexplored Africa and the encouragement of
exploration with a view to spreading civilization,
became dubious when assured that the sole motive was
philanthropy. He wrote to Sir Bartle Frere:

The question is whether the public who represent
money will take the same interest that he does.
Philanthropy is all very well, but unless it is
practical and gives a practical result it will not
find that favour in the eyes of the English public
that it deserves. [Sidney Lee, King Edward VII,
I, p. 629.]

However, Leopolds emphasis on philanthropy
served his purpose. The other Powers showed little
enthusiasm for an enterprise that was represented as
involving expenditure without hope of pecuniary
recompense, and when he offered to bear all the expense
himself, they allowed him to assume the burden (as they
supposed it) on condition of his preserving freedom of
religion, freedom of trade, freedom of the Press, and so
on.

After winning the approval of the world by suppressing
Arab slave-raiders, the royal philanthropist set to work
to introduce orderly government into his dominions. Being
thoroughly up-to-date, he established a system of State
Socialism, the most thoroughgoing that has ever existed;
and in agreement with much modern opinion, he seems to
have held that Socialism should involve no nonsense about
democracy. He issued decrees by which all the land, all
the rubber, and all the ivory was to be the property of
the State  which was himself. It was made illegal
for natives to sell rubber or ivory to Europeans, and for
Europeans to buy either from natives. He next sent a
secret circular to his officials, explaining that they
must neglect no means of exploiting the produce of
the forests, and that they would receive a bonus on
all rubber and ivory, which would be great when the cost
of collection was small, and small when it was great. For
example, if the cost of collection was thirty centimes or
less per kilo, the official received fifteen centimes per
kilo; while if the cost was over seventy centimes per
kilo, the official received only four centimes. The
financial results were all that could have been hoped.
Parts of the Congo were worked directly for the King,
parts for companies in which he was a large shareholder.
Take, for example, the Anversoise Trust, which exploited
a region to the north of the river. The paid-up capital,
of which the State had half, was £10,000, and the net
profits in six years were £370,000. Another company, in
four years, made a profit of £731,680 on a paid-up
capital of £40,200. The original value of the shares
 of which the King held half  was 250 francs,
but in 1906 their value had risen to 16,000 francs. It is
more difficult to discover what were the profits of the
vast areas which were reserved as the Kings private
domain, but it is estimated by Professor Cattier that
they amounted to £300,000 a year. [Morel, op. cit.,
p. 145.]

The methods by which these vast profits were
accumulated were very simple. Each village was ordered by
the authorities to collect and bring in a certain amount
of rubber  as much as the men could collect and
bring in by neglecting all work for their own maintenance.
If they failed to bring the required amount, their women
were taken away and kept as hostages in compounds or in
the harems of government employees. If this method
failed, native troops, many of them cannibals, were sent
into the village to spread terror, if necessary by
killing some of the men; but in order to prevent a waste
of cartridges, they were ordered to bring one right hand
for every cartridge used. If they missed, or used
cartridges on big game, they cut off the hands of living
people to make up the necessary number. The result was,
according to the estimate of Sir H. H. Johnston,
which is confirmed from all other impartial sources, that
in fifteen years the native population was reduced from
about twenty million to scarcely nine million. [Sir H. H.
Johnston, The Colonization of Africa (Cambridge
Historical Series), p. 352.] It is true that the sleeping
sickness contributed something to this reduction, but the
spread of this disease was greatly accelerated by King
Leopolds practice of moving hostages from one end
of his dominions to the other.

Enormous pains were taken to keep secret the large-scale
systematic murder by which the royal capitalist obtained
his profits. The officials and law-courts were both in
his pay and at his mercy, private traders were excluded,
and Catholic missionaries silenced by his piety. Belgium
was systematically corrupted, and the Belgian Government
was to a considerable extent his accomplice. Men who
threatened disclosures were bought off, or, if that
proved impossible, disappeared mysteriously. The only men
in the Congo who could not be silenced were the
Protestant missionaries, most of whom, not unnaturally,
supposed that the King was ignorant of the deeds done in
his name. To take one instance out of many, Joseph Clark,
of the American Baptist Missionary Union, wrote on March
25, 1896:

This rubber traffic is steeped in blood, and if
the natives were to rise and sweep every white person
on the Upper Congo into eternity there would, still
be left a fearful balance to their credit. Is it not
possible for some American of influence to see the
King of the Belgians and let him know what is being
done in his name? The Lake is reserved for the King
 no traders allowed  and to collect
rubber for him hundreds of men, women, and children
have been shot. [Morel, op. cit., p. 54.]

But it was easy to suppose that the missionaries
exaggerated, or that these were merely isolated instances
of officials who had been turned to cruelty by fever and
solitude. It seemed incredible that the whole system was
deliberately promoted by the King for the sake of
pecuniary gain. The truth might have remained long
unrecognized but for one man  E. D. Morel. Sir H. H.
Johnston, an empire-builder untainted with eccentricity,
thoroughly familiar with Africa, and originally a
believer in King Leopold, after describing his influence
in stifling criticism throughout the civilized world,
says:

Few stories are at once more romantic  and
will seem more incredible to posterity  than
that which relates how this Goliath was overcome by a
David in the person of a poor shipping clerk in the
office of a Liverpool shipping firm which was amongst
the partners of King Leopold.
This shipping clerk  E. D.
Morel  was sent over to Antwerp, and Belgium
generally, because he could speak French, and could
therefore arrange all the minutiae of steamer fares
and passenger accommodation, and the scales of
freights for goods and produce, with the Congo State
officials. In the course of his work he became
acquainted with some of the grisly facts of Congo
maladministration. He drew his employers
attention to these stories and their verification.
The result was his dismissal.
Almost penniless, he set to work
with pen and paper to enlighten the world through the
British press and British publishers on the state of
affairs on the Congo. [Op. cit., p. 355.]

From that day to the moment of his death, Morel was
engaged in ceaseless battle  first against
inhumanity in the Congo, then against secret diplomacy in
Morocco, then against a one-sided view of the origin of
the War, and last against the injustice of the Treaty of
Versailles. His first fight, after incredible
difficulties, was successful, and won him general
respect; his second and greater fight, for justice to
Germany, brought him obloquy, prison, ill health, and
death, with no success except in the encouragement of
those who loved him for his passionate disinterestedness.
No other man known to me has had the same heroic
simplicity in pursuing and proclaiming political truth.

Morels difficulties in the Congo Reform
agitation were such as most men would have found
overwhelming. The French, impressed by the magnitude of
Leopolds profits, had established a very similar
system in the French Congo, where it was producing the
same results; they were, therefore, by no means anxious
that the world should know the inevitable consequences of
his economic methods. The British Foreign Office, needing
the friendship of France and Belgium for reasons of high
politics, was very loath to be persuaded, and at first
suppressed consular reports tending to confirm the
accusations of Morel and the missionaries.

The Roman Catholic Church  acting, according to
Morel, under orders from the Vatican  represented
that the whole movement for reform was a disguised attack
upon Roman Catholicism emanating from the Protestant
missionaries; but later, when the evidence proved
irresistible, this defence was abandoned. King Leopold
and his agents, of course stuck at nothing in the way of
vilification and imputation of discreditable motives.

Nevertheless, Morel and the Congo Reform Association
succeeded in rousing public opinion, first in England,
and then throughout the civilized world. The British
Government was forced to admit that the accusations had
been confirmed by our Consuls, especially Casement (who
was hanged during the War). The King, to keep up the
pretence that the atrocities had occurred against his
wishes, was compelled to appoint a commission of three
impartial jurists to investigate the charges, and,
although he published only a fragment of their report,
what was allowed to appear made it evident that the
charges were well founded. At last, in 1908, Europe,
using the authority conferred by the Berlin Congress,
deprived him of the Congo and handed it over to Belgium,
on the understanding that the Kings system of
exploitation should cease. By this time King Leopold had
come be to avoided by his brother monarchs, on account
both of his cruelty to negroes and of his kindness to
ballet-girls.

Against King Leopold, it was possible for the
conscience of mankind to be victorious, for he was, after
all, a minor potentate. Against France, agitation has
proved powerless. Except in the coastal regions, from
which travellers are not easily excluded, large-scale
atrocities occurred, and probably still occur; but an
impenetrable mist still lies upon the forest . [Morel,
The Black Mans Burden (1920), p. 147.] - Bertrand
Russell

The above text is reprinted from theWebsite of one Rae
West at http://www2.prestel.co.uk/littleton/brfobcon.htm#st
. The following are some of Mr. West's comments:

"Booklets published by the Congo Reform
Association are available in the British Library.
I was surprised to see how much of the work seems
to have been done by women.

"There's some irony in Russell's distinction
between 'savages' and the 'civilized world': I
don't think he ever considered whether survival
in dangerous and unhealthy regions of Africa
didn't, in fact, require considerable skill. He
used the same word 'savages' in his Autobiography,
which was written/revised when he was in his 90s.
It's possible that the word was meant in the
sense of being wild or unplanned, rather than in
the technical sense of 'uncivilised' or the other
senses suggesting cruelty or unsociabilityhis
History of Western Philosophy has a
passage stating in effect that modern techniques
wouldn't permit people to survive in small groups.

"Russell seems never to have revised his
views of the various imperialisms, or attempted
to seriously weigh evidence, always for example
regarding the British Empire as benevolent, and
the Russians as barbaric; perhaps similarly with
regard to earlier epochs he seems never to have
encountered views seriously anti-Norman Conquest
or anti-Spanish in South America, or pro-Attila
or pro-Genghis Khan.

"Casement also investigated and reported on
Catholic atrocities in Peru. He appears to have
been targeted with a 'dirty tricks' campaign,
involving a supposed diary of his, but I'm
uncertain whether it was shown to be forged."